Description
Book SynopsisReligious sectarianism played a significant role in the early settlement and social development of the United States. Although historians have minimized what these societies contributed to the creation of a uniquely American social imaginary, this era of social experimentalism drew the attention of highly influential European writers including Goethe, Tolstoy, Marx, and Weber. More recent social thinkers like Benedict Anderson, Charles Taylor, and Robert Wuthnow emphasize the importance of discourses (familial, dynastic, religious) in the creation of community. They contend that literary analysis, in particular, is critical for understanding how social imaginaries develop, sustain, and transform themselves. Drawing on thinkers like Marx, Weber, Dawkins, and Goethe, Nineteenth-Century Utopianism and the American Social Imaginary explores the evolution of the American social imaginary within these discursive traditions. Goethe, in particular, becomes a major contributor to this
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments – Introduction—Ubi? Unde? Quo? – Theories – Mythologies – People of the Book – American Religious Utopianism – The Holy Family – A Community of Weavers – Makarie’s Cosmos – Index.
